Weekly Stories

As most schoolchildren are told from a young age, A stands for Apple; April, on the other hand, surely stands for the Apple Watch. The industry’s most hotly-anticipated wearable has been preceded by months of speculation – could it sell as well as the iPad on its launch? Will it provide a natural fit for fashion editorials? Now, on the eve of its launch, keen industry-watchers are looking to Baselworld (the watch industry’s international trade fair) for possible rivals. There, a crop of new announcements are proving themselves worthy contenders to the smart watch throne – one which, as we should remind ourselves, Apple hasn’t ascended to quite yet.

Just last month, it was announced that 100 stores on Regent Street in London have already implemented beacon technology. If used in the right way, beacon technology can serve to create a brick-and-mortar shopping experience optimised for today’s omnichannel consumers. It makes indoor navigation, automatic store check-ins, contactless payments and location-based marketing possible. It also allows for more accurate collection of visitor information.

Over the last year two distinct groups of fashion apps have emerged, and both use the element of discovery. Up first, the app that uses the intuitive ‘like’/dislike’ method and secondly, the image recognition app used to eliminate the need for semantic word searches. See if you’d like to get more closely acquainted with some of these: